


That One Summer At Camp

by thatsoccercoach



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, One-Shot, Summer Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 11:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20007754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsoccercoach/pseuds/thatsoccercoach
Summary: Awaiting the arrival of their first child, Claire has begun to write down stories from her past that she wants to remember, those that are part of her legacy. Some stories have unexpected aspects and are more than meet the eye.





	That One Summer At Camp

She’d begun writing things like this down, these stories that were a part of her childhood, that influenced her still to this day. There were stories about her travels with Uncle Lamb. She included details of his discoveries as well as the minutiae of daily life; how to build a campfire as well as how to unearth potsherds from ancient times without damaging them. There were stories about nursing school, about her friend Joe and his constant encouragement to her as they delved into their profession.

****

A couple stories were brief. Her first meeting with Jenny that had gone terribly awry for reasons that still none of them could really nail down was written, concluding with a short paragraph of their current friendship that most certainly couldn’t be summed up in a simple story.

****

Then there were endless stories about her and Jamie. How could one sum up the concept of destiny? Of a soulmate? These were the stories she wanted to tell their child (and a few stories that she most definitely _didn’t_ plan on telling but wanted to remember and cherish all the same). 

****

It was late. She couldn’t sleep. Her back was aching and her husband wasn’t home to rub it.

****

So she padded down to the kitchen and made a cup of herbal tea.

****

Tonight’s story was another story from her early teen years, one that she remembered vividly and that had taught her the value of integrity. Pen in hand while the other trailed gently over the swell of their child, loose sheets of lined paper in front of her, she began to write.

* * *

****

“Claire?!”

A flurry of loose items scattered as Mary and Geillis, mates from the same cabin in years prior, came running toward her. Questions came flying as we attempted to catch up with a year’s worth of information in a single moment resulting in uproarious laughter all around.

It was a wonder to us all that we had ended up at the same summer camp, The Ridge, and continued to come each year. 

Geillis’ parents had sent her on a whim. They could have been described as something of hippie, political activist, freedom-loving, conspiracy theorists who lived on a farm that basically amounted to a commune. Geillis had never attended school in her life and was the wild-child among the three girls.

Mary came from somewhat of an opposite situation. Two years younger than the other girls, she had lived a sheltered and highly structured life. She came from a military family that moved about with great frequency and was primarily raised by a nanny and schooled by a tutor. Generally quiet and shy, she lit up around Claire and Geillis.

And obviously, there was me, Claire. Uncle Lamb had sent me to camp beginning when Iwas nine years old. I had loved the independence I was afforded there and the respect I received from the other girls due to her knowledge of nature and my ability to out-prank anyone in the camp.

There began the real story.

“Are ye ready for the prank war?” demanded Geillis. “We’ve got to beat the boys’ camp this year. Last year was an absolute disaster!”

“We didn’t concede defeat last year though,” Mary chimed in, large round eyes turning from Claire to Geillis and back again. “It can’t have been a total disaster if we refused to be defeated. We’re here now, ready to win, right?”

“Right!” Curls sprung from my ponytail as I nodded, adamantly. “We need to be thorough in our plans this year. Nothing can stop us. Nothing can defeat us. This is the best part of camp and we’ve got to make it count!” I slammed one fist into the palm of my other hand making a slapping sound.

“So we’ll start right away then?” Geillis’ narrow eyebrows arched as she inquired, a slow smile spreading across her face.

“Yes, I have a plan already!”

“Good, because I already told one of the boys that you were going to beat them,” smirked Geillis.

“You what?” I squealed, color most certainly rising in my freckled cheeks. “You told them _I_ was going to get them? Because one, that could spoil things and two, they’ll know it was me! Anyway, the mystery of it is the beauty of it!”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I told him ‘The Sassenach’ would be getting her revenge. Like a code name, yeah?” 

As Geillis and I went back and forth Mary’s stare continued to flit from one to the other, keenly observing.

“Fine.” I huffed in obvious agitation, having narrowly avoided my identity being exposed. “Let’s unpack and start working out how we’ll get these plans to work. I can’t pull it off on my own. I’ve got ideas but I’ll need people to help.

“We’re in,” a grin split Mary’s face as she grabbed a bag that must have weighed nearly what she did and began to drag it up the cabin’s steps. “Let’s do this!”

While we were swimming in the lake -a much cleaner and leech-free place compared to the pond- the boys were already in action. We returned to our cabin just over and hour later to be met with a rather humiliating sight.

“Look at the flag pole…” Mary trailed off in horror.

“I know, I _know!_ ”

“That’s yers, isn’t it, Claire?” Geillis pointed to the bra that flew from the pole near the top where a flag should have been. “Or Mary’s?” she hesitated, attempting to look at Mary’s figure without appearing overly intrusive.

“Mine is a training bra,” whispered Mary. “It’s not yours, Geillis?”

“Nah, I didn’t bring one at all.”

“You both _know_ it’s mine,” I snapped. “ _This_ is unacceptable. We can _not_ allow things to continue like this. We’re starting now. Come on, we need to take action.”

While activities were running that day Mary snuck around the pond over to the boys’ camp. Smuggling in a screwdriver and a few tins of tuna. She snuck into Cabin 2, the housing of known pranksters, unscrewed their vents, and slid in the tins, leaving them to gradually stink up the room before slipping back to the girls’ camp. 

Little did we know that we had the ultimate adversary on the watch.

* * *

“That’s BS!” exclaimed Geillis at breakfast the next morning in the dining hall, the shout earning her a glare from a nearby counselor. “How did they catch on so fast!”

Apparently one of the boys had noticed the screws in one of the vents, the one above his bunk, and had immediately investigated. Once he found the tuna there, the other hiding places were easily discovered and our entire plan was foiled.

“There’s a kid who is some sort of super-observant, mister know-it-all or something,” I complained. “I guess he’s helped with pranking people the last couple of years. He’s apparently been the source of our problems.”

Mary slid a tin of tuna, sealed in a bag, across the table. “Here,” she mumbled. 

“Gross, I don’t want it. I want to figure this out. They never should have caught on! Did the kid who gave that back to you _say_ anything, Mary?”

“Just to watch out for the ‘Dun Bonnet,’” she replied.

“What kind of name is that anyway?” I grumbled.

“What kind of name is ‘The Sassenach’?” Mary looked genuinely puzzled.

“It was more a rhetorical question, Mary. I’m just saying, who does he think he is? He won’t win.”

“Claire’s right,” Geillis chimed in. “We’ve got to get them.”

I scanned the dining hall, scouring the opposite end for anybody who looked like they could be messing with my plans. It was time for an old stand-by. Simple, tried and true, just plain annoying. We’d rig the door handle to pull on a string that would activate an air horn to blow right as they walked in. Nobody would get hurt, there were no tricky parts to fail. And we’d win.

But we didn’t.

* * *

“You’re sure you did it right?” I was interrogating Geillis after another failed attempt to prank the boys of Cabin 2. Basically the entire day had passed without them saying a word. I had first assumed that they didn’t want to talk about it but one of the younger boys had told Mary that the prank hadn’t even worked. I was beyond livid.

“I swear it, Claire! It’s not as if I haven’t done things like this before.” She rolled her eyes at me before continuing. “I snuck in there and positioned everything properly. It should have worked. There’s no reason it failed except that the freak Dun Bonnet somehow knew something was up. We need to win this. For all the girls!”

“I know, I _know!”_ Everything we tried seemed to be futile. We would need to do something bigger or more creative. Our week at The Ridge was slipping by and we were not gaining the upper hand at all. “You know, you guys could come up with things too.”

“We’re not the Sassenach though,” Mary explained patiently as if that excused them from planning strategy.

“Let me sleep on it.”

If only I had known that there wouldn’t be much sleeping that night. Beginning just past midnight, awful, scratchy sounding polka music would blare through our cabin every half hour. It wasn’t a mobile phone. Those had been turned in when we came to camp anyway. It wasn’t an alarm clock. It wasn’t _anything_ that we could find in our cabin, yet the noise clearly came from within. The worst part was that the whole cabin knew that _I_ was the prank-master and if I hadn’t been in their cabin, they wouldn’t have been disrupted for the entire night.

It took daylight and frustration as motivation before we discovered a floorboard that wasn’t nailed down. The opening underneath housed a battery powered clock radio set to go off at half hour intervals.

It was war.

* * *

Over the next couple of days we planned and executed several more classic camp pranks and each one, every time, was foiled by the Dun Bonnet. There was nothing we could do that got past him. The worst part was that _he_ continued to prank us successfully, though we tried not to admit that.

We had to admit it on Wednesday morning when we woke up itching.

“Wha’s the powdery stuff in my sleeping bag?” screeched Geillis, looking like she was ready to rip her skin off as she scratched. “Was it there all night?”

“It must have been there all night. There’s no way our whole cabin would have slept through someone entering and dousing us in…” her voice trailed off to nothing as she scrunched up her brow.

“Itching powder,” I stated flatly. “It must have been here all night but with how tired we were we probably didn’t notice it. It looks like we’ve been scratching for some time though.” I noted a red patch on my arm and Geillis had nail marks on the side of her neck.

“It’s not mosquitoes then?” Mary continued. “Not bug bites?” She sounded rather hopeful.

Apparently the Dun Bonnet had made the itching powder himself from natural ingredients found in the local woods. Somehow, the fact that he’d used nature itself against us made it even more frustrating. We took turns quickly showering before we left for breakfast. Prank wars were supposed to be fun, but maybe that’s because I was used to winning. My temper cooled slightly as the water washed over me. My mind felt like literal gears were turning within giving me an awful headache while at the same time forcing me to think through as many possible solutions as I could.

When I got out of the shower the girls in the cabin held a note out to me. 

“It’s from the Dun Bonnet, Claire,” Geillis explained.

As I read, she crossed her arms and paced barefoot around the room, risking slivers from the floorboards but too distracted to care much.

“We’ve got the Dun Bonnet, we’ve got you on the run. We’ve got you four times but you’ve got us none,” I read aloud, slowly. “That’s not even right. They got us with the bra, the music, the itching powder, and...that’s it.”

“Well, fuck,” said Geillis, quite succinctly. “That means there’s another one coming.”

We spent twenty-four hours on the lookout. We watched our meals, sent girls back to watch the cabin from a distance, and stayed awake in shifts overnight until the sun rose in the morning and we found another note on the door. 

“Four,” Mary looked confused. “That’s all it says. Just ‘Four’ and nothing else.”

“Because they got us again,” Geillis slammed her pillow over her face and let out a scream.

“But they didn’t.” Befuddled would have been the best way to explain the expression on Mary’s sweet face.

“But they did,” I explained with a sigh. “We didn’t even do normal camp stuff yesterday. We were so worried about them pranking us that the only thing they had to do was create ‘the prank that never was.’”

I was ready to quit at that point but I got called to the camp office to take a phone call. Then I _really_ wanted to quit.

My cat, Frank, was really old. His health had been declining for the past few months and in the past two weeks had taken an awful turn for the worse. My journal was filled with pages of my concerns for him. I knew when I left for camp that I might not see him again but I never really _expected_ it to happen. But sweet Uncle Lamb called to tell me that Frank had died. He offered to come and get me, offered to call and check in again, offered to get me a new pet when I returned (even though taking a cat on archaeological digs had been anything but convenient).

I went back to my cabin in a daze, went about my activities halfheartedly, but I dove into planning a prank that would be sure to succeed. It was the only thing that pulled me out of my funk.

* * *

“Ok, are you ready, Mary?”

I’d concocted the perfect plan and had executed step one. There was a boardwalk that crossed over the pond like a bridge. That was how the boys came to the dining hall at mealtimes. Other than that, the boardwalk was the boundary between the two camps: The girls side was _The Ridge_ and the boys’ side, _The Craigh._ It was stupid, I thought, since _craigh_ was just rock and usually a ridge was made of rock, but whatever.

The boardwalk wouldn’t function as a bridge between the two sides tonight though since I had replaced several planks with thin balsa wood instead. The Dun Bonnet was going to take a swim tonight.

“I’m ready, Claire. Tell me how the plan goes again?” she pleaded. Her hands shook as she clutched a walkie talkie close to her chest and slung my backpack on her back with the other.

“You pretend to have a crush on the Dun Bonnet. There’s already a note asking him to meet you at the bridge. Look, he’s probably a giant nerd, starved for attention and that’s why he is acting out. He’ll be desperate.”

I explained the plan until she looked calmer (and Geillis looked more mischievous).

“You are walking all the way around to meet him but it’s almost dark and they’ll start doing cabin checks before dark. You’ll need to hurry back but you can say you’re nervous about crossing the bridge alone. It _is_ rickety to begin with. Ask him to lead you across.” I shrugged. “He’ll step on the replaced planks and fall right through. Simple.”

“You’re brilliant, Claire,” she whispered in awe.

“It’s a team effort,” I shrugged again. “Now get going. I’ll have this walkie-talkie here in case you need to get in touch. I also have my camera so I can watch it all happen from this side and get a picture when he falls in. Go!”

Mary scampered out the door, nearly skidding on the dirt that littered the cabin’s front porch. We waited for her to get a solid head start before I left the cabin. That was good because only moments after Mary left, our counselor called me out to the porch for a “little chat.” 

Any more pranks and I would be sent straight home.

* * *

“Hawkins? Come in, Hawkins!” My whisper was likely at the level of a scream but she wasn’t answering and I needed her to stop before leading the Dun Bonnet across the bridge. Our counselor was still out on the porch so I couldn’t go out and actually intervene like I wished I could. 

I attempted to wrangle my curls into a ponytail before grasping the walkie-talkie once more. “Mary? Please answer!”

“Hello, Sassenach.” The voice startled me. It was clearly a boy, not Mary at all.

“Who is this?” I knew who it had to be but the question was out before I could even think.

“Some call me the Dun Bonnet.” 

I could practically _hear_ him shrug casually.

“ _What_ did you do with Mary?” I nearly snarled at him.

“Nothing! She showed up here, but she saw the boys’ camp director who said it was lights out and he was going to check cabins. She yelped and ran off without her backpack which is how I got the walkie-talkie. I’m sure she’ll be back to you soon, but you better get back to your cabin if you’re not there already. I know that you’re on thin ice with the director too and he’ll cross the pond as soon as he’s checked over here.”

“Oh no oh no oh no,” I wailed. “He _can’t_ cross over here!”

“Why? Can’t you be in your cabin?”

A long pause ensued where I fought internally with myself about what I should and shouldn’t say.

“Sassenach?”

The voice was softer this time.

“I want to say I’m sorry about yer cat.”

“What? How did you know about him?” My throat began to feel all clogged up and I could feel the tears threatening.

“I thought, well, I read,” he stumbled before blurting out “I thought yer journal was a plan book for yer pranks and I read it. I’m sorry!” 

“Thanks,” I muttered, swiping the back of my hand across my blurry eyes.

“In light of what’s happened, should we call a truce?”

“I don’t know how we can” I quickly wondered how angry Uncle Lamb would be if I got kicked out of camp before I began to explain the whole situation to The Dun Bonnet, somehow feeling as if it was safe to do so.

“Don’t worry, I think I can fix this,” he replied.

That was the last I heard from him. I stayed awake for nearly all of another night, wondering what would happen, but when the morning light woke me I wasn’t confronted by the director about any pranks at all.

* * *

“Sorcha?” Jamie’s voice ricocheted off the walls of the hallway and into the kitchen where Claire sat at the table, uncramping her hand.

“In here!” she called back. “I’m writing again.” 

He took two giant steps to cross the entire room before planting one kiss on her lips and the other on top of her rounded belly. 

“Which tale is it today, then?” he queried, picking up a sheet of paper. “Yer talking about The Craigh? Telling a story about me this time then?”

“No,” she laughed and playfully shoved him away from the pages. “I’m telling about one year at summer camp!”

“At _my_ summer camp,” he reiterated.

_“Wot?”_

“The Craigh was where I went to summer camp. Ye ken I went to camp when I was a child, Sorcha!”

“Yes, but that was _my_ summer camp. I was at The Ridge! I’m telling the story of the year the prank war erupted into chaos. It’s a camp legend: The Sassenach vs The Dun Bonnet.” 

Blue eyes whipped from paper to amber eyes, then back to the pages again before Jamie spoke.

“But... _You_ were The Sassenach? I was The Dun Bonnet.” 

“Jamie,” she breathed. “How can that possibly be? And,” she continued. “How did you save the director from the pond and me from being sent home?!”

* * *

“Uncle Dougal! Wait!” I ran until my lungs burned, certain that he was ignoring me just to spite me. He knew I had been pranking the girls and didn’t approve of the disruptiveness. He stopped right before he crossed the pond, whirling around to look at me.

“James? I believe it is lights out.”

“I ken, Uncle Dougal. But you can’t cross the boardwalk. You’ll need to go ‘round this evening.”

“Why would I go ‘round when there’s a perfectly good way in front of me that is far more efficient?” His eyes bored into me and I feared he could see the truth already.

“Because…” I trailed off, then groaned. “Ahh, there’s a trap. There’s a trap on the bridge.” I explained to him in a torrent of words, hoping that it would make things easier if I just spat it all out.

“And I suppose you know this because you were involved?” 

I could blame The Sassenach and he would probably believe me. She _was_ the one who set the trap after all. But it didn’t feel right

“I suppose you could say that…”

“Then go pack yer bags, James.”

* * *

“After that chat on the walkie-talkie, I had a crush on you,” Claire smirked, her cheeks flushing as she turned in her seat to face him where he stood.

“A crush, aye? On the Dun Bonnet?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Aye,” she teased.

“I cannae believe,” he said, reaching his hands out and gently pulling her from the chair, “That in all the places in all the world, we found each other then. Ye somehow _knew_ me even then.”

He bent to kiss her then and went on a long while, his hands roaming the new curves of her body created by their child. She was breathless by the time they broke apart.

“Loving you,” he paused. “It’s always been forever for me, Sassenach.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This idea/fic is anything but original. Many details are from the kids radio drama Adventures in Odyssey. I'm pretty sure there was a babysitters club book that had something like this too lol! Anyway, I'm not saying that it's unique to me, just that I wrote it all down and decided to post (without editing...sorry.)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!


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